Friday 8th December
Today we realised we have less than 400 miles to go to St Lucia, which was very exciting! During the day the kids watched another Pirates of the Caribbean movie while the rest of us napped and read books. I made a wholemeal sourdough in the morning as we are getting very low on any other kind of bread. The loaf was gone by lunchtime so another one got prepped for tomorrow.
We have been having much discussion about time zones in the past few weeks as we cross 3 or 4 of them during this journey. We couldn’t agree on what time to set our phones to, so we started a new time called Uno Atlantic Time. We have been on UAT for at least a week now - basically time is only really important so that we can set our alarms for our nightshifts. However, UAT had slipped a little, and our 8pm - 8am night shifts were no longer covering the hours of darkness. So we made the decision to switch to St Lucia time, which was three hours earlier than UAT. It’s become clear that we all get very confused discussing times and zones. Now our night shift starts at 6pm and ends at 6am. This is our new darkness time and it will still move out a little as we get closer to St Lucia. But only 2 night shifts to go after tonight’s!! Thankfully too as the nightshift was a little eventful tonight/ this morning (I’m still doing mine now, it’s 5am). The squalls found us on Kenny’s 12-3am shift, and we battled a few biggies in a row. Kenny called out to us, then without much warning we suddenly had 35knots swirling around us, with one reef in each of the main & the Genoa. We continued to be pummelled by the wind for about 30 minutes, during which time we managed to further reef the headsail and Rich went out and got the 2nd reef in the main. However, when Uno accidentally gybed the lazy jack lines on the Starboard side couldn’t handle the pressure & snapped, dropping down onto the coach roof so we now have one side of our sail bag hanging and flapping open. We are hoping it makes it through the night so that we can repair it tomorrow. There have been a few more squalls but we have managed to dodge them. Now waiting for the sun to make an appearance in an hour or so, with light comes the feeling of calm & safety. Everything is so much harder operating in the dark with just our red headlights to see what’s happening.
520am Update — OMGosh, it’s light enough to see now, and the first thing I notice is our starlink has been ripped out of its holder on the port side of the coach roof & is now upside down in the center of the roof, teetering on the back of our solar panels!! I crawled out to get it, who knows if it still works?! It will need re-wiring. I guess you’ll know if you’re reading this post today!
Uno out.